Academics fiddle while Health Care Reform burns

The New York Times reports on a New England Journal of Medicine article, that criticizes a report that serves as one of the cornerstones of President Obama's health care reform effort. According to the Times:


"Mr. Obama received his information about the hospitals from a widely cited analysis called the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, produced by the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. An article in The New Yorker magazine last year written by Dr. Atul Gawande that used the Dartmouth Atlas as its organizing principle became required reading in the White House last year.

But an analysis written in The New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Peter B. Bach, a physician and epidemiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, suggests that much of the Dartmouth Atlas is flawed and that it should not be used to compare the relative efficiency of hospitals."


You can read Dr. Bach's critique of the Atlas here.

Health insurance companies post big profits

Here's an interesting article, from the Chicago Tribune.

The five biggest insurance companies made $12.2 billion in 2009 (up 56% from 2008), while insuring 2.7 million less people. And now the best part. The report, released Thursday by Health Care for America Now!, also said three of the five insurers cut the proportion of premiums they spent on their customers' medical care, committing relatively more to salaries, administrative expenses and profits.